Edit: I decided to add a little meat to the bone, not in a cheesy attempt to bump the thread, but I thought if you guys could see how some of these characters really feel about the 'unwashed masses' it might give a bigger picture of what's going on when you look at those covers.

Walter Lippman, a mass-media pioneer and Pulitzer Prize winner, was quoted back in 1922 in the magazine 'Public Opinion' as feeling the masses (now referred to as "the consumers") were a "bewildered herd" that needed to be guided by a governing class.

Then there's Harold Lasswell a leading political scientist and communications theorist of his day. His feelings can best be summed up by his statement that "we (meaning them, not us) must recognize the ignorance and stupidity of the masses and not succumb to democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests."

Something to consider next time you're thinking about 'free will.' These reptilian shape-shifting pod people think we're stupid. I'm joking, of course, they're not reptilian shape-shifting pod people. Most, if not all, are regular people like you and me.

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Perhaps the U.S. populace is blessed enough by a charmed life that they could preoccupy themselves with trifles writ large. Time magazine understood that it could not possibly sell these overseas where the people still crave the hard-hitting realer coverages for which Time was known for previously. I succumbed to the mirror palace knowing little that I was actually descending into a spinning black hole that is the U.S. MSM, not to mention the barren intellectual wasteland that is our U.S. television broadcast.

The Internet helped me read genuine comments by people -- yes, often ORDINARY people and that ('ORDINARY') is NOT pejorative at all. I had a tendency to skip when I found bad spelling or grammar but I had overcome that by resolving to ignore them.

The bad spelling and grammar. People should have their voices heard in spite of their poor delivery capabilities. English has enough redundancies in it that these deficiencies are often simply frivolous.

I agree. I used to be a stickler for proper spelling, punctuation, etc. but I've put that aside since participating on internet forums. I've also noticed it's quite easy to make mistakes using a lot of laptop keyboards, as opposed to 'old-school' keyboards that have a little space between the letters. So I largely overlook such mistakes now and try to just concentrate on what's being said. Why nit-pick?

Rules were put in for a purpose. Before we decide to violate them to serve corporate devils, we should at least take a look at the original reasons why the rules were there. Why the U.S. has such short memories is beyond me. Perhaps we are a forward-looking country that ignores history because there is just so little of it of our own.

Yes, it is up to the people but they often do not know until yet anther disaster happens because they lack warrant-less wiretapping capability that was given to our Federal Bureau of Incompetence/Incontinence and Never Say Anything/No Such Agency.

So be it. Disaster-triggered management of the U.S. has been awful because it is often too much and too late. We send Apache attack helicopters after our horses have bolted from our barn (so that we can get it straight from the horses' teeth).

Definitions of terms that we use were often corrupted (by appealing to our emotions) and MSM were sometimes accomplices. After the inevitable accounting, we will hopefully have the American bald eagle soaring proudly again clutching the dead rattlesnake in its talons.

I truly feel sorry for some people who know in their bones somehow that they had been had and yet could not quite pinpoint the causes. Perhaps their attention span was so shortened that they could not comprehend any explanation that exceeded their capacity. Yes, disasters grab attention but doesn't waiting-for-disasters-to-happen seem to be an utterly ridiculous way to run a country often dubbed at home as 'the leader of the free world', 'the richest country on Earth', 'the sole hyper-power', 'the most powerful country' etc.?

Capitalism needs a framework to function well and the government must provide that framework subject to the will of the people. Otherwise, all of these niceties of freedom, property rights, and civil liberties are meaningless.

Conservatives, liberals, or otherwise should all be subservient to the pursuit of the welfare of our people simply because we are the Americans and if that means anything at all, we must secure our values, whether through job creation, regulation, or breaking-up of mega-banks. Values define being American so anyone can be American but no one can be American unless they share the values -- it is as simple as that.

Those that understand psychology and human behavior have a serious edge over us 'regular folk.' And the coercion and manipulation has been refined to such a high degree that even some of the more enlightened among us often miss a lot of what goes on. It's kind of like magic tricks or optical illusions. You think you know exactly what you're seeing, until the truth is pointed out to you. Then it's a big 'a-ha' moment.

With a link to a page I don't have at the moment. But the graphic pretty much is proof that our society could be completely controlled by a collective unconscious or something in the collective unconscious.

What makes it absolutely possible, is that none of us know what is happening with our mind when we are sleeping.

Now, speaking of psychology; do you realize that there is not one single standard treatment direct to the unconscious besides hypnosis? That is immensely illogical when considering that while awake we are 86% unconscious AND that unconscious state could be regarded as uninterrupted through our entire lives.

After that, how significant is your conscious life? Or better said, why isn't the significance of the unconscious even discussed or known by ANYONE?

I've seen that graphic before, on another link I checked last year. If accurate, it's pretty profound, to say the least. And you bring up a very valid question, but whose to say someone, somewhere isn't studying this as we speak? If so, there are some powerful implications in it.

Yep, this is in the collective conscious (CC), like television media, so about anyone could read it, but the web is less far reaching; meaning that the collective unconscious(CU), if what you imply has merit, can begin to notice, via the CC, that it is beginning to notice that the vastness of the CU moves with little regard for the CC on one hand, but for great and vital reason on the other.

I would present that elements of the CU are trying to get enough info into the CC relative to the CU's purposes, activities etc., to influence individual unconscious minds to withdraw the mass dissociative phenomena that disables the populations from attending, properly to managing the CC despite the unruly influence of dark forces natural to the CU.

Hmmm, well, since we know so little about the CU, why do you think there are "dark forces" natural to it? Are you saying that man in general has a dark side in his unconscious that he's in constant conflict with?

Not quite my thought. There is a persistent influence of darker, de evolutionary potential; very basically instincts in the CU; IF the CC is not diligent in constantly redefining purposes which are intrinsic to the positive aspects of the CU.

Therein is the de evolutionary influence of mass media when meanings of free speech to humanity are not held high, honored and used well.

External dark forces, yes, but most importantly is that the light of knowledge cannot be effectively shared without free speech. When that needed knowledge is in place, which can be provided by free speech, people have protection.

Not sure, but if you do find it, I'd definitely like to read it. Also, see my edit above for a couple of good quotes from two of medias' early "pioneers for an idea of what they think of the average consumer (give me about ten minutes, though, I haven't posted them yet, as of 1:30 Central Time).

How true about Turner. I just finished watching the documentary, "Marriage from Hell," about the AOL Time Warner debacle. Good piece. Proof that "two bigs" fail all the time.

nearly twenty years before that though he sold CNN to Time saying that "he wanted to know what it felt like to be big before he died" or something to that effect, back then CNN actually covered news

the how you look to them is a great graphical repersention of relative size of those in the top .0063% and everyone else a level at a time it is awesome and you can see right where you fit, if you're luckly emough to be amoung the slightly visible.

As the concentration of wealth increases it will take ever tighter control of information to prevent revolution, the wealthy will go to great lengths to be able to establish their legacies. Our democracy, our freedom and our very lives will in the end be fed into the machine to preserve the right of the rich to keep a bit more of the Earth even as the prize itself is destroyed.

I see it on MSNBC when they say we will never return to the rates of even a few decades ago, when of course we must and even higher rates since wealth is concentrated at the top even more than it was a few decades ago.

Interesting.
But there are many times when I think that many Americans are just that. Self absorbed spoiled children. In a nation where the most popular TV programs are "reality" TV maybe Time is right.

Agree with the statement about many Americans being self-absorbed spoiled children. But TIME isn't reflecting that with these covers. TIME, and the MSM in general, are part of the reason we're like that. This isn't opinion. If you're sincere, zombiefighter, do some research into how powerful the media is in shaping the population's beliefs, perceptions, etc. These covers show that the MSM isn't interested in reporting real news to us, they want to keep us distracted with American Idol and all this other bullshit. It's about keeping us from the real issues.

The media only provides information that will give them ratings. So, with that being said - it's apparent that that's what the people are into for if they weren't the magazine wouldn't survive.

Do a poll with the X Y and melinum generation on politics. Lots of them don't even know who our VP is but yet they can tell you who is on "dancing with the stars.

This is the reality of our society - and there is not much focus on government unless something happens that has a direct affect on them then they want the government to do something about it or they want change.

I confess that I love uncovering links in things that seem unconnected.
The reason we have so many reality garbage shows and why we have so little real investigative news is CRAPITALISM.
Around a decade ago, there was a TV writers' strike. Neworks discovered that cheap junk is as popular as good drama . - ByeBye West Wing, Commander in Chief, etc.
Mad Men, etc are now on cable.
Do check out a new sci-fi fantasy "touch"
As 20/20 devolved into murder crap, it pulled most other hard news with it.

I still respect most of MSNBC. They really dig into stories. Check it out anytime from 4PM-11PM. Especially Rachel, Chris, Lawrence

It's a lot deeper than that Steve. If you don't think the media is primarily a propaganda tool, then you probably should do some research as well. That's not a conspiracy theory, it's a historic fact. Compare the covers. Most of these conglomerates are worldwide, the American market is only part of their business. If what you say is true, why do they feel the need to tell the rest of the world real news to survive, but feel they need fluff to survive here? It's about keeping us in the dark about world affairs. They push that shit (Idol, etc.) so we will watch, not the other way around.

Granted the news media tries to direct people in a certain drection with the way they present news. CNN is big on doing that.

However, people are supposed to think for themselves, arent they? If all they want to watch is stupid worthless time wasting programs or spend usless hours on facebook, blogging, or texting that is their pregorative.

And if thats what the media thinks will sell, then that's the direction they go to capture the audiance.

Yeah, that's the way most people see it. We do think for ourselves, of course, but most people would be shocked if they realized the undue influence they have by preying on such things as basic human emotions. It's natural to believe that we're too smart to be manipulated, but literally millions have been spent over the course of the last hundred years or so refining this to a high art. Magicians, con-men and even simple optical illusions prove that under the right circumstances, what we think we see is actually something different altogether.

And the attitude is what pisses me off. Back in the twenties, I think, a guy named Walter Lippman, described as a 'mass-media pioneer,' was quoted as saying he thought the masses were "a bewildered herd" that needed to be guided by a governing class. He wasn't alone. This is the mindset that mass-media is built upon. To say that I resent that is an understatement.

"I think, a guy named Walter Lippman, described as a 'mass-media pioneer,' was quoted as saying he thought the masses were "a bewildered herd" that needed to be guided by a governing class. He wasn't alone. This is the mindset that mass-media is built upon. To say that I resent that is an understatement."

That's the mindset that a lot of people in power have, sadly. Just look at what the trolls say about "the poor." According to them to reason I'm not a gazillionaire is because I spend all of my money on toys (I don't) and I'm having too much sex (I wish!)

Agreed. A lot of people thing media and advertising are a passive, benign entity, but in fact, it's just the opposite. It's a cutthroat business. In fact, I'd heard, but have no sources or I would've put it on top, that years ago big business declared 'war' on the consumer, referring to us as the 'enemy' in numerous interoffice memos and board meetings. The spoils being, of course, that most desirable of all spoils, money. How crazy is that, to declare war on your very lifeblood? Oh well, at least they're not killing us. Oh, wait . . .

Probably not, I'm not suggesting it would be. But had the media not been so propaganda-driven in the first place maybe things wouldn't be as bad. And it would be nice if we could trust what they tell us. They've lost almost all their credibility.

Propaganda is generally a tool of war. The fact that it's being used so much on the American public is telling. I have some quotes from a couple of the pioneers of media that would give you an idea of how they really feel about the public if you'd like to hear them. When I read them, it really pissed me off.

"reality" tv is cheap to make. thats why it the stations produce it. years ago, newton minnow said that tv was a vast wasteland. he was right. and thats before there was cable and hundreds of channels.

Maybe it's more of a reflection of the lack of intelligence and interest in sophisticated subject matter by the American public.

Just look at this place. How many can discuss macro-economics and history accurately? A student educated in Germany or many parts of Asia can run rings around an American in the same grade. Idle discussion at work always seems to center around sports, not anything of substance or what's going on in the world. But hey, at least there's a plasma on every wall and everyone is carrying around an iPhone playing Angry Birds or youtubing stupid schit. This has less to do with the MSM than the average American's tastes and lack of brainpower and interest in anything academic.

Personally, I think you have it backwards. I would suggest you start your road to enlightenment by watching the excellent documentary, "The Century of the Self" which shows how the American public has been brainwashed and manipulated. Essentially we've been programmed over many generations to be like this. It's been orchestrated and these magazines merely perpetuate it, keeping us distracted.

More lack of personal responsibility? Americans have been brainwashed? No, I think not. Time for some self-introspection and HONEST-REFLECTION.

Guess what? It's nobody's fault but Americans. I know that's hard to believe, but screw the blame shifting and self-preservation. Wake the fook up gnomunny and accept blame for your lazy outlook and crying of all things that "aren't your fault".